News & Analysis

Neil's NFL Daily: May 14, 2013

By Neil Hornsby &bullet;
May 14, 2013

Similarly to yesterday, there were a few things to comment on regarding Monday’s transactions, but while I’m pretty sure I could write 800 words about Antonio Johnson signing with Tennessee I’m not convinced even the most hardcore Titans fan would read them. I’ll give you a few less than that later, as well as covering off some other topics, but as the penalties drawn stats I produced yesterday went down so well I thought I’d give you a taster of a few more of our unique stats that usually only come out in the reports we produce for NFL agents.

Today I thought we’d have a change of pace and look at how guards perform in the running game, which will give you some clues as to why we feel the position is probably overvalued in NFL terms.

Tuesday, May 14th

Grading the Guards

For those of you who are unaware of what we do, a quick recap. On every play we grade every player on a scale between +2.0 and -2.0 in 0.5 increments. The “average” grade is zero and this means for any particular play, if a player does more-or-less what would be expected they draw a zero grade. It’s normally at this stage you get someone asking “how can you grade the player if you don’t know what their assignment is?”, to which I normally have three responses:

– Other NFL teams don’t know what the assignment is either, but do you expect their player personnel guys to throw up their hands and say “can’t be done” when they are asked to evaluate someone?

– Every running play in the game is meant to be a carefully choreographed vignette of players working together. If after watching thousands of hours of tape if you still can’t figure out what was meant to happen, what was intended and what went wrong, you should probably give up. Sure there’s the odd play where a screw up could be one of two people, but these are rare and on these occasions we give both players the benefit of doubt and grade them zero. We have a no guessing rule and enforce it rigorously.

– If we really are not sure about something important we have a whole host of NFL resources we can call on. Players, scouts and coaches that we know are usually extremely helpful in giving us the benefit of their experience.

So, without further ado, here are our grades for guards in the running game broken down simply into percentages of positive and negative grades and ranked accordingly. Let’s start with the Top 10 for percentage of positive blocks, using a qualifier of 150 run blocks graded.

Top 10 Guards (2012) Ranked by % of Positive Blocks

Rank

Player

Team

Total Blocks

% Positive

1

Evan Mathis

PHI

409

16.10%

2

Donald Thomas

NE

287

16.00%

3

Kevin Boothe

NYG

415

15.20%

4

Stephen Peterman

DET

415

14.90%

5

John Greco

CLV

313

14.40%

6

Mike Iupati

SF

476

14.30%

7

Logan Mankins

NE

303

14.20%

8

Jon Asamoah

KC

490

14.10%

9

Wade Smith

HST

534

13.90%

10

Marshal Yanda

BLT

390

13.60%

And here is the Bottom 10:

Bottom 10 Guards (2012) Ranked by % of Positive Blocks

Rank

Player

Team

Total Blocks

% Positive

66

Clint Boling

CIN

447

7.80%

67

Lance Louis

CHI

320

7.80%

68

John Jerry

MIA

464

7.80%

69

Adam Snyder

ARZ

258

7.40%

70

Robert Turner

SL

191

7.30%

71

J.R. Sweezy

SEA

164

7.30%

72

Antoine Caldwell

HST

179

7.30%

73

Louis Vasquez

SD

442

6.80%

74

T.J. Lang

GB

276

6.20%

75

Mike Brisiel

OAK

359

6.10%

In many ways this is the more interesting list and, putting aside that this is only in terms of run blocking, there are at least a couple of guys on here who are not “bad” run blockers at all. Both Clint Boling and Louis Vasquez are much better protecting the QB than moving forward, but neither are close to the bottom of our overall run blocking grades, so why are they on this list? Simply put, while they don’t do a lot in terms of creating holes, they don’t make that many huge errors either.

Let’s therefore look at the least errors, or negatively graded plays.

Top 10 Guards (2012) Ranked by % of Negative Blocks

Rank

Player

Team

Total

% Negative

1

Evan Mathis

PHI

409

4.40%

2

Alex Boone

SF

492

4.70%

3

Nate Livings

DAL

393

5.30%

4

Chris Spencer

CHI

164

5.50%

5

Mike Iupati

SF

476

6.10%

6

Louis Vasquez

SD

442

6.80%

7

Leroy Harris

TEN

156

7.10%

8

Chris Snee

NYG

384

7.30%

9

Uche Nwaneri

JAX

334

7.50%

10

Jake Scott

PHI

160

7.50%

Two key points to note here. Firstly, Evan Mathis is ranked first in both the largest percentage of positive blocks and lowest percentage of negative blocks. This is exactly what one might expect from the player we positioned at six in our Top 101 of 2012 and goes to why we rate him so highly.

Secondly, Vasquez is on this list too. This is part of the reason Denver went after him so aggressively even though he’s not a dominating blocker. The bottom line is he doesn’t make mistakes — combine this with our ninth-best pass blocking grade and zero penalties (yes zero!) and you begin to understand his value.

Finally, let’s look at the guys making the most errors blocking for the run.

Bottom 10 Guards (2012) Ranked by % of Negative Blocks

Rank

Player

Team

Total

% Negative

66

Cooper Carlisle

OAK

403

11.70%

67

Bobbie Williams

BLT

162

11.70%

68

James Carpenter

SEA

161

11.80%

69

Jeremy Zuttah

TB

233

12.00%

70

Mike Brisiel

OAK

359

12.30%

71

Jeff Allen

KC

390

13.10%

72

John Moffitt

SEA

225

13.30%

73

Robert Turner

SL

191

13.60%

74

Kory Lichtensteiger

WAS

504

14.10%

75

Mike Brewster

JAX

189

15.30%

The really interesting player here falls just off the list — for those Lions fans looking at the very first list and wondering why Stephen Peterman is no longer with the team, he was actually 63rd on this list. In essense that’s what the Jets have picked up as their potential new right guard — a very boom or bust player and very different from the excellent Brandon Moore.

Lastly, I hinted at our view on guard value. As the more astute will have noticed, in an average season of say 400 run blocks the difference between the best and worst player is about 10% of blocks or about 40 plays a year. Given that for most running plays to function efficiently everyone must do their job and one standout player, no matter how truly excellent (as the Eagles found to their cost last year) achieves very little.

Other Points of Interest

In an offseason of strange moves by the Titans, signing Antonio Johnson yesterday appears one of the more unusual. Since he was drafted in 2007, Johnson has been symptomatic of the problems with the Colts’ run defense — a surfeit of players who are purportedly run stuffers who clearly don’t fit that mold. Now, it’s not as if Johnson is a pass rusher either, but that’s not what surprises me the most. The oddity here is when you already have five players in the defensive tackle rotation who are clearly better than him, why taken a known quantity for depth? Isn’t it better to take a shot at an unknown younger guy with potential upside as camp fodder?